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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23197291">Snow</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardenrabbit/pseuds/ardenrabbit'>ardenrabbit</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Gift for Ran [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Voltron: Legendary Defender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Christmas Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Snowball Fight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:09:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,484</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23197291</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardenrabbit/pseuds/ardenrabbit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The other part of this incredibly late christmas gift for the talented, beautiful Ran! I'm so sorry it took me this long, and thank you for waiting for it! I'm happy with how these turned out and I hope you enjoy c:</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Keith/Lance (Voltron)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Gift for Ran [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667689</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>66</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Snow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ran/gifts">Ran</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This does NOT follow after the previous work, Eve. They're completely distinct stories on separate timelines, so no continuity from there. Just another little story c:</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Keith's shoes sank through the snow. He listened to the top layer of ice crunch, and then the layers of frost beneath it crinkle and surrender all the way to the frozen ground. He had to lift his knees high with each step, or else drag his shins through the snow, but he took another step just to see the imprint it made in the impeccable field of white. The hills went on further than he could see, framed on either side with trees, and to his and Lance's backs, the mountains sheltered the cabin Lance had rented for them.</p><p>"It's quiet," Lance noted, and the observation was unnecessary but sweet. "I thought you'd like it."</p><p>"I do," Keith replied at the same time he clutched his coat tighter. Lance laughed and stepped up beside him, each motion punctuated by the crunch of snow.</p><p>"You haven't said a word in like, ten minutes."</p><p>"I'm cold," Keith said. Lance laughed again, and this time, he was close enough to nudge Keith's shoulder with his own. They were getting better at friendly gestures like that: less squabbling, more high-fiving. A hug now and then, if Keith was especially lucky.</p><p>Lance told him helpfully, "Snow is cold."</p><p>"No shit," Keith huffed. He was happy as a clam when he was in the desert, from the scorching days of seeking sweaty refuge in the shade, to the chilly, open nights of huddling against the radiator. He was never <em> freezing </em>in the desert.</p><p>But then, he had never seen snow before, and that was why Lance had brought him all the way out here.</p><p>Keith kept considering how extremely generous that was of Lance. With the war over, the paladins were off duty for the season. Though they would spend the major holidays together on Earth (they were due to introduce Allura, Coran, and Romelle to winter holidays like Christmas, and the Alteans had promised to share their own seasonal traditions in return), they had gone their own ways for personal trips, family visits, and smaller vacations within the larger one. He hadn't imagined that Lance would want to spend a long weekend alone with him, especially not with time he could have given to his family instead.</p><p>While the paladins had appraised a tacky Arizona snowglobe in an antique shop, Keith had made the mistake of noting within earshot of Lance that he didn’t know what snow felt like. Lance had gaped at him in horror and purchased the snowglobe without blinking. </p><p>Really, it was hideous. It showcased a poorly-painted cactus wearing sunglasses and a Santa hat. Even worse, it had a twisting key at the bottom that could be wound to make it play “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”</p><p>It was currently on Keith's nightstand on the Atlas.</p><p>“We can go back inside,” Lance offered, and Keith turned his head to look at him and catch the soft amusement in his eyes. “I didn’t bring you out here to give you frostbite.”</p><p>“What did you bring me out here for?” Keith had to ask.</p><p>Lance sucked his teeth and frowned. His cheeks and the tip of his nose were capped in red from the cold, and snowflakes stuck in the short strands of his hair wherever they weren’t covered by his hand-knitted hat. It was the middle of the day and still freezing, and past the glaring shine of the sun on the ice, Keith squinted to watch Lance’s face and wait for his answer.</p><p>“To experience snow,” Lance replied. “You’ve never seen it before, so we have to cover all the basics and catch you up.”</p><p>“Did it ever snow in Cuba?” Keith asked.</p><p>“Not really, but my family traveled a lot while I was growing up. My dad’s job got us sweet vacations. We went to Canada and China and Scotland, stuff like that.”</p><p>Keith and his dad hadn’t traveled. They had gone as far as the city, to the zoo or even the observatory. They had gone to the Grand Canyon. Once or twice, they had gone to Texas to see Keith’s grandfather. But it had always been desert. Keith couldn’t remember leaving the desert until he had left Earth altogether.</p><p>Lance tugged his gloves more securely onto his hands and knelt down. The snow was almost a foot deep, and though the snowfall didn’t look aggressive, Keith could imagine Lance sinking into it and getting lost. He kept a close eye on him, but all Lance did was scoop some snow into his hands and stand back up. He showed Keith his prize, just a loose bunch of snow cupped in his gloves. Keith met his eyes again and arched an eyebrow, wondering what point he was trying to make. Lance sighed and closed his hands to pack the snow together.</p><p>“This is a sacred art form,” Lance told him gravely.</p><p>Keith could recognize a snowball. As soon as he caught onto Lance’s plan he started to move away, but it wasn’t enough. A perfectly formed snowball pelted him in the face and exploded on impact.</p><p>Keith shrieked. He said some unkind things, and while he brushed the fast-melting snow off his cheeks and out of his hair, Lance was bent over laughing. He had put several steps of distance between them, but that wasn’t going to stop Keith. He barely bent down, scooped snow into his hands, and threw a half-packed snowball right into the side of Lance’s head.</p><p>The war had begun. The two of them tore up the perfectly smooth layer of fallen snow, perforating it with their tracks, laughing and stumbling through it and making a map of their battle in a maze of trenches. They only took a brief armistice so Lance could instruct Keith on proper snowfort-building techniques. After adjusting to the cold and finding competitive motivation to remain in it, Keith devoted himself to destroying Lance.</p><p>"Okay! Okay! Enough!" Lance finally cried. Keith was still out for blood, and frankly, he hadn’t been paying attention to how much time had passed. The sun was still up, and they hadn’t frozen to death yet. It couldn’t have been too long.</p><p>"Funny how you waited until now to say that," Keith purred, adding a modicum of weight to the foot on Lance's chest. Pinning him to the ground and making a perfect, Lance-shaped silhouette in the snow was all too satisfying. It made freezing away the feeling in his fingertips worth it. Lance groaned and lay back in the snow, chest heaving under Keith's boot as he recovered his breath.</p><p>"Meanie," Lance complained, so Keith poised the remaining snowball in his hand. "Wait, wait wait wait, not point-blank!" he cried, throwing his arms over his face.</p><p>"You did the same to me earlier,” Keith pointed out. “Are you gonna say sorry?”</p><p>"Okay! I'm sorry! It was really funny, but I’m sorry!"</p><p>Lance had begged his way out. He was just too… He looked too easy a target on his back. And he was making Keith laugh. Keith tossed the snowball aside and took his foot off Lance's chest, setting it down instead in the snow on Lance's other side. Just standing over him was satisfying, too, especially when Lance peeked up at him and then held his eyes too long.</p><p>Having Lance's attention was fun. Keith would have Lance's undivided attention for the next few days. He had to savor it.</p><p>"Are you gonna make a snow angel down there?" Keith asked, and Lance snorted and sat up on his elbows.</p><p>Keith had made a mistake in letting down his guard. Lance grabbed him by the ankle and tugged. Keith yelped when he fell backward, and he hit the ground directly on his ass. The only appropriate response to the cold, hard impact up his tailbone was to shout, "Ow! Dick!" and to clamber forward to push Lance down again. Lance was laughing hard, and his head fell right back into the same cut-out shape in the snow it had made moments before. Even when Keith was sitting on top of him, holding him down by the shoulders, Lance lay back passively and smiled up at him.</p><p>That was a weird look on his face. His smile was simultaneously too soft and too mischievous, looking in on a joke too subtle for Keith to understand. It was an unfamiliar expression on Lance's face, just the wrong combination of fond and charming, and it was too handsome for Keith to deserve. It was the kind of look he had always wanted Lance to show him. He had to answer it with a suspicious scowl.</p><p>"I was about to help you up," Keith informed him.</p><p>"That's alright," Lance replied. "I'm fine here."</p><p>Fine, with Keith sitting on his chest.</p><p>"Hilarious," Keith huffed. His attention turned to Lance's hat, which had fallen skewed on his head to expose his right ear. It was bare to the snow and turning red from the cold, so Keith lifted a gloved hand off Lance's shoulder and gave the folded hem of the hat a slight corrective tug.</p><p>Keith was learning quite a bit about snow. It stuck to things like Lance's hat and eyelashes, but the flakes melted soon after they landed on his red cheeks. It framed Lance's head where they had broken through the ice, and where Lance's smile had fallen away, the snow highlighted the next strange look on his face. He gazed up at Keith with investment, what seemed like genuine interest. Lance cleared his throat, and the odd moment of silence melted like snow.</p><p>"I think I got used to this, training with you," Lance remarked, maybe by way of explanation. It wasn't an entirely unfamiliar position for them, now that he mentioned it. In their early days as paladins, Keith would beat Lance consistently in hand-to-hand. Lance would end up on the training deck floor, on his face or his back, pinned down or not. Sometimes he would groan and throw himself down on the floor in frustration, saving Keith the trouble. Usually, though, they would wrestle and Keith would come out on top.</p><p>Keith had never truly looked down on Lance, and he couldn't imagine Lance really looking up to him. It had always felt like the other way around, until recently. Lance had stopped pushing him away.</p><p>"It's been a while since we trained together," Keith noted, staving off the quiet.</p><p>A while. Before Keith had left with the Blades. Before Keith had become the Black Paladin. It had been years for him.</p><p>"Exactly,” Lance said. That implied too much; if Lance said that he had felt Keith’s absence, Keith wouldn’t know what to do. He tried to deflect it.</p><p>“What?” Keith laughed, but his voice felt thin, like the air in the mountains. “Don’t tell me you missed it.”</p><p>Lance didn’t have much levity left in his face at that point. For just a second, it faded entirely. All too quickly, he replaced it with a compensatory grin.</p><p>“I’ll tell you what I do miss right now,” Lance chuckled, “and that’s the heater in the cabin. Get off me.”</p><p>Keith shifted to oblige. Another mistake. As soon as he went lax, Lance launched himself up, gripped Keith by the arms, and flipped them over to push Keith down into a foot of snow. The snow collapsed under him and outlined his defeat.</p><p>“Lance!” Keith shouted, but he couldn’t manage to be angry. His initial instinct to take offense was buried under a surge of unexpected laughter.</p><p>He had missed this. The competition. The playfulness. Lance’s company.</p><p>He pushed at Lance’s chest, but his efforts didn’t last long. When he met Lance’s eyes, they were round enough to give Keith pause. It wasn’t often that he saw Lance with that kind of subdued surprise.</p><p>“What?” Keith asked, suddenly and surprisingly too warm. Lance’s parted lips shut, and his jaw flexed slightly when he swallowed.</p><p>“It’s just been a long time since I’ve heard you laugh like that.”</p><p>The gentleness in Lance’s voice was unsuitable for this kind of play fight. Keith cleared his throat and wriggled under Lance’s weight, seeking a lapse in his balance and finding none. He didn’t need to struggle for long, because Lance pushed himself up and held out a hand to help Keith up with him. Together they stood and dusted the majority of the snow off of their clothes.</p><p>After the short walk back to the cabin, Keith was grateful to shut the door behind them and lock out the cold. Immediately, the two of them went to the next order of business: pushing off the burdens of their coats and shoes in favor of the dry warmth of the living room. They did this at the same rhythm, at the pace they had grown used to changing in and out of armor. Keith kicked off his boots at the same time that Lance stepped out of his shoes, both pairs of which they left by the door. The wall sported a row of hooks, and after hats and scarves, the two of them managed to hang up their coats in the same instant.</p><p>Keith’s hand lingered on the neck of his coat, as did Lance’s. His own hands were rough and pale, but had been mostly saved from the cold by Lance’s insistence on proper winter gloves. With his own gloves off, Lance’s hands were the same strong shape they had always been. The same soft, tanned skin. The same clean nails that he didn’t bite. They made a nice contrast, as they always had.</p><p>Keith shouldn’t have lingered on that image--a window into what a domestic life with Lance might look like, with details as simple as coat hooks and cold-reddened fingertips--but he did. Lance's fingers curled on the neck of his coat, gripping it tighter as if to brace himself, and Keith almost thought that he would speak. Then Lance let his hand fall slack and let go. His arm swung down again to his side. Keith was almost brave enough to ask what Lance was thinking when their eyes met.</p><p>“Want hot chocolate?” Lance asked, cutting the moment off before it could draw out. He turned around and stepped into the tiny kitchen, keeping the afternoon in motion. He almost kept Keith from overthinking.</p><p>This was nice, Keith thought. Hanging his coat up next to Lance’s. Looking forward to making a simple, canned dinner together. Being alone with Lance because Lance had liked the idea enough to suggest it. It wouldn’t last, but it was nice.</p><p>“I’ll make a fire,” Keith answered quickly, giving himself something to do, and chased himself to the other end of the living room.</p><p>He peeled his gloves off his hands and laid them on the stone hearth, and he set to laying dry logs in the fireplace. He found a box of matches on the mantle, struck one to life, and lit a small bundle of wood chips and shavings beneath the grate. He sat back on the floor, let out a deep breath, and watched the small flame lick upward and catch on the split logs. It was meditative. Keith gazed at it and held his hands out toward the heat until he heard Lance moving behind him. He looked over his shoulder as Lance set down one of two mugs on the coffee table.</p><p>“Cold?” Lance asked needlessly. Keith grunted. “Hot chocolate’s a pretty good hand-warmer, and we’ve got blankets over here.”</p><p>It sounded like an invitation. Keith surveyed the frame of it, the postcard image that Lance had offered to him. Behind him, away from the comforting, ashy metal smell of the fireplace, was an old couch loaded down with quilts and knitted blankets. Lance sat on one side, wrapped in a quilt and a handmade sweater, holding a mug of hot chocolate in his hands with his sleeves protecting his fingers, and watched Keith expectantly.</p><p>He took the offer slowly and kept his eyes down, kept it natural, as he picked himself up off the floor. How frequently he felt like a wild animal, something found in the desert and never quite acclimated to civilization. It still felt the most natural to him to sit by something so primordial as a fire, and he had to be coaxed into the kind of homeyness that everyone else was so accustomed to. He hoped that he looked as he was: not reluctant, and not ungrateful, but just awkward. When he took his seat on the other side of the couch, he followed Lance’s example and drew one of the knitted blankets around himself, then picked up the mug he had been given. That, too, was handmade, the ceramic glazed a dark reddish-brown like rust. It was warm to the touch, and Keith pressed his palms closer around the mug. Lance had topped the cocoa with whipped cream and a dash of cinnamon.</p><p>“Thank you,” Keith said.</p><p>“Anytime,” Lance replied, and Keith thought that was funny.</p><p>“You’ve been really nice lately,” Keith noted. He was almost afraid to mention it, as if casting any light on it would dispel it. He had always known that Lance was kind. Through their time as paladins together they had always butted heads, but Lance had given him more and more of that kindness until Keith could almost take it for granted.</p><p>He wanted to get used to it. It was too much to ask, but he wanted this to stick.</p><p>“I mean…” Lance cleared his throat. He reached forward and set his mug down on the coffee table, still half full. “I guess it’s overdue.”</p><p>That made sense. Lance was just trying to make up for their antagonistic history. Maybe this trip was Lance's apology.</p><p>Going further, maybe this was Lance's olive branch. Keith hadn't made this friendship particularly easy, and perhaps this trip was Lance's way of being the better man, being the first of the two of them to offer some peace. Lance was good enough to try and fix what Keith excelled so much at breaking. He had long since resigned himself to the way he felt about Lance, knowing that pursuing him would damage the mutual support they had built beyond repair. They had left behind the bickering, and they had saved each other’s lives so many times that they were inextricably bound as comrades, but that didn’t mean Lance would want his affection.</p><p>"Look," Keith sighed, "you don't owe me anything. You don't have to do anything you don't want to, especially not for me."</p><p>"Keith, that's not what this is about."</p><p>It was kind of Lance to say that. He sounded so serious, maybe even hurt, and Keith almost believed him. Still, he reined himself back and tried to pick his path more carefully through the conversation. He didn’t want Lance to think he was ungrateful for the gesture of spending time with him.</p><p>“I guess I just wasn’t expecting it,” Keith said. “You, offering to hang out with me. Alone. For four days.”</p><p>“Is it so hard to believe?” Lance asked with a small, pained smile. “I mean… It feels right to me.”</p><p>"It does?" Keith asked hopefully, and Lance's smile brightened.</p><p>"Yeah. Well…" Lance gestured between the two of them. "Us."</p><p>The two of them as a unit. They had always stood beside each other. Keith hoped that was as undeniable as he felt it was.</p><p>“Lance and Keith?” Keith recalled with a small but fond laugh. "Neck and neck?" It was alright if Lance was more focused on their competitive streak. That was a cornerstone of their relationship, after all, and its friendly distractions had kept Keith more or less sane during their time away from Earth.</p><p>“Well, there’s that,” Lance laughed. “Or, you know. Just us. Hanging out.” His shoulders shifted under the blankets, and his eyes flickered to the fire and back to Keith’s face. “Honestly, I was kind of surprised you agreed to come.”</p><p>“Why wouldn’t I?” Keith asked, genuinely confused.</p><p>“Well, it sort of took us a long time to get along,” Lance said, and Keith appreciated his bluntness.</p><p>“It was worth it,” Keith answered easily.</p><p>“I…” Lance fell silent and blinked at Keith. One hand had started to fiddle with the edge of his quilt, but it stopped. “Yeah?”</p><p>There was something hopeful in his eyes. Keith didn’t know how to take responsibility for that. He shrugged and hid in his hot chocolate for the space of another sip, but then he had to elaborate.</p><p>“Well, yeah.” Just say it, Keith. Lance deserved this much honesty from him. Keith exhaled shortly and kept his eyes on his mug, studying the way the whipped cream was starting to disintegrate. </p><p>“What I mean to say,” Keith said, careful and deliberate, “is you’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had.”</p><p>"Oh." Lance sounded surprised, but it wasn't a mean feat to earn that title. Friends had always been scarce in Keith’s life; he had always had room for applicants. Then again, maybe that did make it more impressive. It was a rare, hard-won position. More surprising yet was Lance's sincere reply of, "You, too."</p><p>He didn't need to say that to make Keith feel better, but he sounded like he meant it anyway. When Keith raised his eyes to him, Lance was watching him with such earnest vulnerability, seemingly waiting for another grand revelation. Keith wasn't sure he could offer another one up. All he could say was the simple truth, now that Lance appeared willing to hear it.</p><p>"I've wanted to be your friend this whole time," Keith admitted quietly.</p><p>He hadn't really expected for Lance to flinch. Lance's gaze slid to the side, and he worried his bottom lip. Maybe saying that had just rubbed their old animosity in Lance's face. Could saying something that honest and positive really be hurtful? Keith prepared an apology, but Lance beat him to it.</p><p>"I... Me too. I..." Lance groaned and rubbed the angle of his cheekbone. "Listen. I never hated you. And I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you that. I always thought you were cool, because, come on, that's obvious." Lance was dismally mistaken, and Keith started to grimace, but Lance cut him off. "Hey, don't make that face. Please. I need to tell you something, so…"</p><p>This pronouncement set Keith's anxiety high enough to make him set aside his cocoa. Without the mug in his hands, his fingers started to feel cold and clammy. He bundled them in his blanket, sat straight, and waited for Lance to continue. Across the couch, Lance squared his shoulders and took a deep breath.</p><p>"So," Lance started again. "My reasons for inviting you out here are partly selfish. I wanted to talk to you. And if any of this makes you uncomfortable, we can go back to the Garrison at a moment's notice, so you're not stuck out here with me."</p><p>"Lance, where are you going with this?" Keith asked, and he didn't mean to shrink back. They were alone, but he suddenly felt the pressure of an audience around him, waiting for him to say the wrong thing. Waiting for him to ruin this moment of <em>Lance</em> <em>wanting to talk to him</em>. Waiting for him to slip up and reveal too much.</p><p>"I'm saying…" Lance shut his eyes for several seconds. When he opened them again, he kept them on Keith's.</p><p>"I love you," Lance said. "I fell in love with you a long time ago."</p><p>Keith waited for a follow-up. A  correction. A qualifier that would bring some context. Anything that would make this make sense. Lance wasn’t explaining himself, but watching him from across the couch, looking as distressed as Keith was beginning to feel.</p><p>“What?” Keith finally managed, the word small in his throat. Amazingly, Lance found it in himself to say it again.</p><p>“I love you, Keith,” Lance said, falling close to a whisper. “I couldn’t stand not telling you. I almost lost you so many times, and... I’m not-- I’m not asking for anything. I just needed you to know.”</p><p>Lance wasn’t taking it back. It still didn’t make sense, but Lance wasn’t taking it back. Keith wondered briefly if this was an elaborate joke, but Lance wasn’t cruel enough for something like that. It was more likely that Keith was having a strange dream, taunting him with something he could never have, though he could usually jolt himself out of those. While Keith stared at the details of Lance’s face and began to accept that, yes, this was really happening, the lack of reaction on his part took its toll on Lance.</p><p>Once Lance found his words again, he rushed them back out. “If you want some space, I get it.” He extracted himself from the pile of blankets on the couch and found his feet.</p><p>Lance loved him.</p><p>Keith didn’t need to know how or how long or why. For the moment, all he needed was to understand that Lance was serious.</p><p>He followed Lance up, and before he could go too far, Keith reached out and caught his hand. Lance froze, stared at Keith’s arm, and followed the line of it with his eyes, up Keith’s shoulder to his face. There was the same glimmer of hope in his eyes from earlier, right beside a flash of fear, like Keith might take a swing at him for a confession like that. Keith couldn’t stand that look. He needed to wipe away the apprehension and cultivate that hope. He needed to make it realized.</p><p>“Lance.” Keith started and stopped. What could he say that would be good enough? What words were actually deserving of someone as special as Lance? “I…”</p><p>Lance tried to give him a break. He spoke at a hush, not loud enough to fill the small room.</p><p>“Please,” Lance said. “Please, don’t say something you don’t mean. It’s just that now, after everything, I ran out of excuses not to tell you. You’re brave and beautiful, and I love who we are together. I used to think I wanted to <em> be </em>you, but…” He groaned and covered his face with one hand. “God, I’m sorry. I’m saying too much. I just--”</p><p>There was only one reasonable thing to do. It was the only option that Keith’s instincts left to him. He stepped in, closing the small space between them, and let go of Lance’s hand to hold his cheek instead. Lance lifted his palm off his eyes and stared at Keith, lips slack with shock.</p><p>His lips looked soft. Keith’s had chapped already in the cold. He hoped that would be acceptable.</p><p>Instead of jumping the gun and going in, Keith asked under his breath, “Brave and beautiful, huh?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Something about the way Lance breathed that simple word made it heavier. Keith watched him swallow, watched his throat bob, and watched Lance’s eyes direct themselves slightly lower, as if Keith’s mouth was anything interesting. “Keith, please, I--”</p><p>Keith jumped the gun. He pulled Lance closer and went in.</p><p>This was his first kiss.</p><p>This was a good place for it.</p><p>The contact was too hard, maybe, at first. He heard Lance inhale sharply through his nose, felt just a little too much press of their teeth against their lips, but then it evened out. Lance made corrections, though he wasn’t too delicate. He wasn’t patient enough for that. Before he could ready himself for it, Keith had Lance’s hands in his hair and the full, warm pressure of a real kiss on his mouth.</p><p>Keith hadn’t known that it would make him so lightheaded. He hadn’t known that Lance’s undivided attention, his body heat, and his comforting, familiar smell would unsteady his knees like this.</p><p>He clung to him. Lance didn’t seem to mind. Keith wrapped his arms around him, wanting to fit as tightly as possible against him, and Lance only broke the kiss when Keith made a strange, desperate sound in his throat. He didn’t know what he was asking for; he just wanted something so badly that it was making his chest tight. Lance’s breathing was shaky and his lips were red, and he was looking at Keith from only inches away with all too much intensity.</p><p>Keith wanted more of that. He wanted to satisfy everything that he had longed for, and everything that Lance might have waited for. He wanted to burn out this strange, overwhelming neediness fogging up his head, but most importantly, he wanted to answer the trust Lance had shown him. He deserved that much honesty.</p><p>Keith finally got the words out:</p><p>“I love you.”</p><p>What a terrifying, irrevocable thing to say. Keith didn’t even need a full hand to count how many times he had used those words in his life. He wasn’t sure that he was ready to elaborate, but it seemed that this was enough for Lance. He whispered Keith's name, as if it had some deep, inherent meaning to it, and kissed him again.</p><p>To be frank, Keith didn't know what he was doing. Lance tasted sweet from the hot chocolate, and he handled Keith gently but eagerly. Before he could note the distinction, before he could track the change from one mood to the next, their lips had opened to each other and Keith was feeling the slide of Lance's tongue in his mouth, and <em> oh, okay, </em>he was just going to have to try and keep up. He didn't intend to make the next small, overwhelmed noise in his throat, but it happened anyway and made Lance pull back again. His soft thumb stroked Keith's cheek. His eyes searched his face, gentle even in that.</p><p>"You're shaking," Lance whispered. Was he? Keith blinked at him and couldn't clear any of the stars out of his eyes. His breath shivered softly as he tried to catch it. His fingers curled loosely in Lance's hair; he'd never pet someone's hair like this. "You okay?"</p><p>"Yeah." Keith was tempted to bury himself in Lance’s arms. He was warm and inviting, and he smelled nice, and he was touching Keith so sweetly. He had never been touched like this before, and now that he had the experience, he wasn't sure how he had survived so long without it. "Can we…?"</p><p>Lance led him back to the couch. When they sat down again, it was with their knees touching and their hands on each other's sweaters. It was such a cozy position to be in, and Keith was eager to ruin it.</p><p>They were tumbling down a hill, just as Keith's heart tumbled in his chest. Keith wanted them to keep falling. He wanted them to follow this moment all the way to the conclusion. If he stopped to think, he might be too afraid to start again, and it was vital for him to keep going and make Lance understand. He just wanted to act, to show Lance how he felt in a tactile way. As always, though, Lance was the better communicator.</p><p>“Keith,” Lance whispered, “it’s okay. Can we just stay like this? Can I just hold you for now?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Keith swallowed hard and nodded. He tucked himself close against Lance’s chest and let himself be wrapped up in his arms, and his excited, anxious trembling gradually diminished. Lance’s fingers traced through his hair--Keith knew it was messy--and he let himself be held like something precious. This was the way Lance chose to hold him, safe and warm.</p><p>“This is nice,” Keith whispered, but that was insufficient. “This is perfect.”</p><p>Lance hummed. Keith could tell that he was smiling without looking up.</p><p>"You're like a big, heated blanket,” Lance chuckled. “Galra body temperature tends to run a little hot, right?"</p><p>“A couple degrees hotter, yeah,” Keith muttered. His face was already flushed enough. “Am I too warm?”</p><p>“No.” Lance’s fingers passed through his hair again, this time tucking a lock behind his ear. He made it so casual, as if it was an easy thing to show Keith affection. Keith wanted it to be easy. “No, you’re perfect.”</p><p>What a thing to say. Keith buried his face in Lance’s shoulder to hide there. Seeking shelter in him was easy, too. Lance made it easy. While Keith trusted him, holding and being held, Lance pulled one of the blankets around the two of them.</p><p>They had arrived here at this safe place, and Keith was happy to enjoy the peace and security. The quiet cabin and the calm, stable mountains outside would make a good place for him to process these things, looking forward to a long weekend of loving and being loved by Lance. Lance kissed the top of Keith’s head, and Keith burned hot enough to keep them warm.</p>
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